1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a thin flat camera provided with a framing mirror on the front side of the camera housing.
2. Prior Art
Thin flat cameras are already known, for example, the one disclosed in "Research Disclosure," March 1982, p. 88 and adapted for use with a cartridge of a film disk. The disk is provided approximately at the center of the cartridge with a hub member to be coupled to a rotational drive system within the camera and has a photographic film including 15 image areas arranged around the hub member, with the shorter sides of the areas positioned circumferentially of the disk. The cartridge, which is thin in itself, is suited for providing a compact, flat and lightweight camera. The camera housing is formed with a rectangular exposure opening which has horizontal sides longer than vertical sides and which is located away, radially of the film disk, from the position where the center of the film cartridge is to be located. Accordingly, to make the camera as compact as possible, the camera housing may desirably be designed such that the center of the film cartridge is to be located approximately at the center of the housing while the camera objective or taking lens is positioned approximately in the vertically middle portion of the front wall of the camera housing closer to its one side end. The film cartridge is generally in the form of a square having one corner thereof cut out. The viewfinder optical system may be disposed in the camera housing to look through the cutout, whereby the camera is made further compact.
On the other hand, when a self-portrait picture is taken with a self-timer, it is generally impossible for the user to accurately know his own position within the coverage of the lens or his position relative to other objects within the scene to be photographed. Thus, the user encounters difficulty in photographing the surrounding objects positioned as desired in the picture obtained. To solve such a problem, a viewfinder has also been proposed which has a convex mirror on the front side of a camera for enabling the user to observe the coverage at a location in front of the camera and frame the scene to be photographed.
Namely, it is known to provide a framing mirror, i.e., a mirror for use in the framing, on a camera for showing the photographic coverage of the photographic lens to the user who takes a self-portrait, for example, by self-timer photography. However, where to position the mirror on the front side of the camera demands due consideration. For example, great parallax will result if the mirror is positioned a large distance away from the camera objective lens. Further, if it is positioned close to either side of the front of the camera, a hand of the user holding the camera will touch the mirror and soil the mirror surface as with a fingerprint or the user will have difficulty in holding the camera. Moreover, it is impossible to dispose the mirror at a position where it is likely to interfere with the viewfinder.
The convex mirror of the viewfinder nevertheless is likely to permit deposition of dust or become defaced by contact with some other articles because it is left exposed at all times.